


Mortal ranks

by laughingpineapple



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Becoming Slightly Eldritch Basketball Gods, Early Days, Gen, Missing Scene, transcendence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-11-28 14:37:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20968199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: Leaders of men and harps and now something new, an otherworldly horizon opening up with each slain titan. Who shall follow them, and what will they find?





	Mortal ranks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hecleretical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hecleretical/gifts).

A long time ago, in the time of the Scribes, before they were Eight, before they Wrote, Gol Golathanian the Master-General once sat upon the southern shore of the Sea of Solis and rested his weary feet.

"We are freeing the road for those who will follow," he said to his companion, for he was a practical man who liked to voice his appreciation for a job well done, in the name of fairness and morale.

"Aye." Saint Triesta Tithis turned to look at the miles behind them. The land folded back on itself after their passage, wild forests and wastelands reclaiming their sole ownership of the Downside, but the skies to the South whence they came remained clear. Her voice rang with the absolute certainty that had followed her since birth. "Others will follow."

"Soliam Murr is a compass," said again Gol Golathanian with a strong affection in his voice - his liege walked further on, a striking silhouette against the boiling sea. The last Emperor had seen them first, these waves of pilgrims to come, had felt the sum of their footsteps rumble from the future and come to him, and see him changed, and see in him the potential for change within themselves. He had shared his vision with his companions, who had agreed with his wisdom in the way a pupil agrees with their mentor, which is to say, intellectually, but still too far behind in their own path to understand it in full.

In that moment, on the shoes of the boiling Sea of Solis, a wind rose, ruffling the Matriarch's stern feathers, booming against the plates of Gol Golathanian's armor. That wind carved out his consciousness and carried it far away, back to the ridge where the Serpent Titan had stood. His heart beat with the dead Titan's and with the life crawling underneath. The Master-General remembered this feeling in a dream from many a night before, but he was not dreaming then, and as he stood on the precipice staring at the fall of the river Sclorian, impossibly distant, he felt the Downside speak to him in tongues yet unknown.

The harsh wind that came from the sea would sustain its howling throughout the night. Gol Golathanian came back the long way, or so he felt, eventually returning after a fraught journey to the comfort of his mortal body, and yet he had never been gone at all.

"Others will follow," he said, finding his tongue alien in his mouth. He was glad to find Triesta Tithis still perched next to him, for he could not say if his vision had lasted a minute or an age. "But what will they find, if we are to keep changing thus? 'Tis not just for Soliam Murr and I, is it, this process that opens every sense of our body to nameless landscapes? Or has the Blessed-born weathered this trial since her coming? Is this the making of a saint?"

The Matriarch shook her head.

"The blessing was bestowed upon my birth by the star of the First Empress. Geminian shone next to the sun on that day; its light has followed me ever since. This land and its transformations are new to me as well."

A clouded night was falling on the travelers. Aligned above the tip of Triesta's helmet, the First Empress gleamed with an enigmatic light.

"This land shall swallow us in the end," she said, and this, too, rang with absolute certainty. "We all shall melt and fade within it, vision after moonlit dream, or death shall take us, in the end, as is the natural order of things in the lands whence we came, and here as well. What shall they find, these future exiles? Our bones, our echoes, our paths. What can we leave them? Our teachings. No more."

Such answer comforted the Master-General, who took his leave from his companion and went to the sea, to confer with his Emperor under a coat of stars.


End file.
